Conventional communication systems, such as cellular phone systems and broadband wireless metropolitan networks, are often divided into a number of cells. These cells are typically distributed in a pattern to preclude co-channel interference and thus provide coverage of subscriber units operating within the service area of the system. In some systems, each cell includes a base station that employs radio frequency (RF) transceiver equipment, antennas, and wireline communication equipment. The subscriber units in the area of a cell site thus use RF transceivers to communicate with the RF transceivers of the base station. In turn, the base station relays voice and data traffic to/from the mobile units and to/from a mobile telephone switching office or access service gateway. This office or gateway is, in turn, generally connected to a central network, such as a public switched telephone network.
To improve system capacity, some cells are further divided into sectors or smaller cells, with the base station replaced by lower cost but reduced capability micro or pico cells. In addition, distributed antenna systems are often employed to optimize the RF distribution in larger cells to increase coverage at a lower cost than multiple pico or micro cells. These approaches permit the reuse of a limited number of RF channels without the costs of installing new base stations. Also, such techniques can be used to extend coverage to areas where RF propagation is limited by obstructions, such as buildings and tunnels, and to areas where the amount of traffic and revenue do not justify the investment for another base station. The distributed antenna systems (DAS) themselves often include a master unit connected to various base transceiver stations of various cellular providers employing different air interfaces. The master unit, in turn, is connected to a series of physically separate remote antenna units. The remote units are connected to the master unit using a high speed serial link (HSSL), and the master unit downconverts and digitizes signals from the base station and time division multiplexes the digital data that is transmitted over serial links to the remote units. The remote units convert the signals back to analog, upconvert, and transmit to subscribers. Similarly, the remote units downconvert and digitize uplink signals from the subscribers and transmit the signals back to the master unit, which converts them to the proper format to transmit to the base stations.
Air interface standards for the distributed antenna system levy requirements on the frequency shift that can be imposed on the signals of the system. Some standards, such as Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) impose such strict standards that they can only be met by frequency locking all signals used for frequency translation within the distributed antenna system to a single common standard. This ensures that all frequency errors introduced by the up and down conversion processes cancel. Consequently, local oscillator signals used for up and down conversion and the clocks used for digital to analog and analog to digital conversion processes must be frequency locked to a common reference. Use of disciplined oscillators, where the oscillators are disciplined by other communication systems, such as GPS or WWW, in all components of the distributed antenna system could be employed to effect the frequency locking. However, this would significantly increase the cost of the distributed antenna system and in many applications where a distributed antenna system would be employed, such as in buildings or tunnels, reception of such signals is problematic at best and nonexistent at worst. The master unit reference could be cabled to remote units with additional cables or additional wires within the serial link cables being used to transfer data. But adding extra cables multiplies the cost of deployment and in some cases may not be physically possible. Moreover, adding additional wires to cables is not always possible as is the case in applications using existing CAT 5/6/6A cable in buildings or other structures, where all cable pairs are required for high speed data transfer and/or are already otherwise used.
To minimize the cost of installation and to take advantage of existing cabling infrastructure, it is also desirable, whenever possible, to use low cost communication cables employing a plurality of conductors, such as unshielded twisted pair cable instead of more expensive shielded twisted pair or fiber optic cables. Use of twisted pair also permits the use of relatively inexpensive copper PHYs such as 10GBase-T Ethernet, instead of the more expensive optical transceivers such as SFP and XFP modules. Use of unshielded twisted pair cables, however, results in additional susceptibility to interfering signals. High data rate serial protocols, such as 10GBase-T Ethernet, which are required to handle the high data rates necessary to transport wideband digitized RF, are particularly susceptible to alien crosstalk because of the more complex modulation schemes and wide bandwidths employed by such formats. Increased crosstalk and noise will lead to more jitter on the data and, hence, more jitter on the recovered clock as well. This jitter must be removed to avoid contaminating the analog to digital and digital to analog conversion processes in order to exploit the cost and installation advantages of unshielded twisted pair.
With respect to other communication links, signals on fiber optic cables are generally not as susceptible to crosstalk from other cables, and crosstalk is not nearly as severe in shielded cables. But such fiber optic cables and shielded cables, as well as the equipment used therewith, is often cost prohibitive and also cannot be used in those applications attempting to reuse cable already in buildings. For example, it may be necessary to take advantages of existing infrastructure, to accommodate mixed systems that use both fiber-optics (such as between floors) and twisted pairs (such as in horizontal runs on a floor).
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a system that can effectively reuse existing communication system infrastructures, such as for distributed antenna systems, without introducing additional costs associated therewith. There is further a need to address jitter, cross-talk, and noise issues in a DAS with twisted pair infrastructure to ensure the system master clock can be transferred to all remote elements to preclude a shift in RF from being introduced during up and down conversions. Still further, there is a need to have a DAS that can handle not only cellular communications but also other communications, such as public safety and radio and WiFi in a single cost-effective system.